A queer theatrical machine where lovers multiply, identities slide, narrative voices interrupt one another, and lesbian desire becomes a principle of form rather than merely the book’s subject.

Set within the feminist and lesbian literary culture of 1970s New York, it draws on camp, fantasy, melodrama, gossip and political argument to create a world in which women are not required to become coherent, exemplary or easily representable. Its excess is deliberate, avoiding the tidier realism through which lesbian lives were often made culturally acceptable.

First published in 1976, Lover was neglected for years before being recovered as a significant work of both postmodern and lesbian fiction. Harris’s new introduction to this 1993 edition places its characters and provocations within the volatile post-Stonewall world that produced it. It remains formally strange, funny and difficult to domesticate: a strong choice for readers of Djuna Barnes, Monique Wittig, Renee Gladman, experimental fiction and queer writing that would rather redesign the novel than request admission to it. 

Very very scarce first printing of the 1993 New York University Press edition, with a new introduction by the author. Good condition with cover rubbing, light marks, edge wear and creasing to the lower front corner.